Tuesday, Jul. 20, 2004 - 3:14 p.m.

Ugh! Starting to miss my computer at home. This is going to sound SO geeky, but there are times when I can still hear its hum and I walk over to that side of my room to check my email. Oops. So far the internet cafe thing isnt too bad. It is saving me an hours worth of AC, haha.

Which brings me to this story. Recently in the Taipei Times I read a small bit about a 9 year old boy in China who stole the equiv. of $3 US so he could play video games in an internet cafe. When he got caught he was so shamed that he hung himself. July 16, 2004 was the date on the paper, and the title of the bit was "Suicide Over Video Game." I would cut and paste it for you, but internet time is limited right now.

To me this story demonstrated two things. One, it reinforces what I see in the internet cafes all over the country-an OBSESSION with these video games. Internet cafe computers dont come equipped with any word processing programs, you cant use teh disk or CD drive and no printing is available. 99.9% of the folks in there are playing LOUD video games.

The other thing is that shame, guilt and saving face are more important here than common sense and learning from mistakes.

But thats just my western view on a VERY different society.

Today I start a slightly diff schedule at work. Since my co-worker is gone on holiday for a month, and we dont hire subs, my boss and I are splitting his classes. So now some of my own classes will go a week and a half with one native English teacher class as will my co-workers. For my schedule it only affects tuesday, so thats nice. I have had my share of schedule changes, but one day a week of confusion wont kill me.

I also have another sore throat. Dont know where this one came from, just hope its gone by the time the weekend comes. Dont wanna interupt my plans. (snigger)

I could write more, but I think I only have 5 minutes left here. Would love to hear from you guys, where you are, how you heard about the site, and why you keep reading it. I got the BEST comments from my friend Nancy the other day. Kept me in good spirits for the entire day. Would love to know more. I still think I am writing drivel, but it helps me think things through, so I keep going.